I had an ugly realization the other day that I’d forgotten some serious developments in The Hollow Crown and had neglected to account for them in plotting out the next Crosspointe book. Bad. Very bad. I’ve been rereading the past couple of days–both The Turning Tide and The Hollow Crown–and realize that I have to essentially toss out what I was going to do and totally rejigger everything. The worst part is that I did a really good job of building the intrigue and complexity and now I have to wind it up in one book. I want to do so as elegantly as all that happened in the previous books. I hope I can.

In rereading all four of the books, I realize that I’m a pretty good writer. This is not something that I remember very often or realize. Maybe it’s because my sales are nothing like the biggies in the field; maybe it’s because my name isn’t splattered all over the place; maybe it’s because it don’t get tons of reviews on Amazon. Maybe it’s just because I’m neurotic. I think most writers are. It’s probably part of the definition. Anyhow, in rereading, I realized that I built the relationships in a way that made me happy. I developed the complexities of the politics the way that I envisioned–they are difficult and twisty. I realized that ending this series won’t be easy because I did manage to capture those complexities and it won’t be easy to resolve them.

These are books I’m proud to have written. These are books that I like to read.

I left a fairly large cliffhanger in The Hollow Crown. I’ll endeavor to make the wait for the finish worth it. In the meantime, I should be able to post links to the reissue of The Cipher on Monday or so of next week.